


My Generation

by Dribbledscribbles



Category: The Magnus Archives
Genre: and 2) I've got some plans for all the apocalyptic plots I've been stockpiling, be sure to check out the author's note guys, but 1) I love my new trash-eating goblin child and you should too, waste not want not, yeah I was shocked with Epoch too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:47:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25188163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dribbledscribbles/pseuds/Dribbledscribbles
Summary: Why don't you all f-fade away (talkin' 'bout my generation)Don't try to dig what we all s-s-s-say (talkin' 'bout my generation)I'm not trying to 'cause a big s-s-sensation (talkin' 'bout my generation)I'm just talkin' 'bout my g-g-g-generation (talkin' 'bout my generation)
Comments: 18
Kudos: 55





	My Generation

It feels the Archivist walk through it. Feels the bristle-tingle of their words. The Extinction is inhaled and exhaled, another story given for the Eye’s amusement. Eye and Archivist will last a long time, it suspects. Perhaps even longer than itself. At least, in this shape.

It knows its predecessor will necessitate other forms. Hungry parent, greedy parent. Slow as it goes, suckling on the chattel’s dying dread and dread of dying, it always destroys in The End. It will begin to harvest from others. 

The Extinction knows The End will starve its child before any others. 

It knows this, if it can know anything, because this fact is one of the few things it can ever know. The Threat of Erasure. The Threat of Unmade Potential. The Threat of a Stolen Future. Such malice is what it is made of, what its chattel languishes over. Unsurprising.

If it _could_ feel surprise, perhaps it would have been shocked at how much of its chattel were young. Not the children squealing in the Dark, but adolescents. Fresh adults. Things new enough to have a future to look forward to, but wise enough to know that it will be destroyed and rotted and blighted by their elders before they ever touch it. 

Delectable. A sweet, decaying mush of dreams and potential made stillborn in the hearts of those who know that powers above their station will always, always put their personal whims over the well-being of others, damning the world to ruin simply because they know _they_ won’t have to suffer in the mess. Sweet, sweet.

…And bitter. That is there too. A hard, bile-burning line cutting through the woe. Hate, hate.

The Extinction licks at it, chews, turns it over in its nebulous non-hands. A strange, razor-edged filament of universal loathing for the Elder, Stronger, Other who could have done something a million times over, at scarcely a cost, and chose every time not to. Chose every time to do what was easiest, what siphoned more wealth and personal pleasure from the pleading masses. 

It is not fear. It is…

The Extinction thinks of the Slaughter. Of the Slaughter’s newborn. 

The Tyrant. A Fear of a world ruled by the stranglehold of a vicious Ruler, a single monster and a small, grim army that could have been overthrown Before, if only people had stood up, had fought back, had done something before it was too late…

It isn’t too far from the Extinction. They can see each other, inasmuch as sight is possible for them. The Extinction holds up the diamantine thread of hate it has found in itself, waving it as if in question. The Tyrant ponders it from its despot’s throne. Then, between bludgeoning one traitor-to-the-State and the next, it pauses to pry up a matching thread. Just as hard, just as hateful. 

They ogle their matching threads, wondering at how they are so tightly knotted together. As they watch, if they watch, the threads give a tug at either end. 

To the Extinction’s other side is the Populace. The Lonely’s antithetical spawn, the Fear of a world becoming crowded with too many people and not enough resources, of devolving into brutish mob gluttony, of never having enough of anything to go around.

Beside the Tyrant is the Consumption. Child of the Desolation, it was the Fear of being absorbed and subsumed by a Power that branded and caged and assimilated anything it touched; all things belonged to the Power. Nothing was free. Nothing was one’s own. 

More tugs came. A soft, curious _twang_ of the same tangled wire of loathing. The Extinction knew the owner of every non-hand that touched it.

The Corruption’s Pharmacist, offering cures that required sacrifices of ever-increasing cost, with no intention of providing a solution that ended an ailment for good. Better to have the ill scrabbling to pay forever.

The Buried’s Vista, forever lashing its victims into perpetual toil, gutting and prettifying landscapes, gentrifying homes, sealing victims in nametags and uniforms, screaming at them to go faster, smile more, hustle, hustle, tend to Those Who Must Be Served At All Costs and Never Enjoy What You Provide, ignore their bleeding feet and the bones showing through their hands.

The Stranger’s Factory, where there was neither place nor time for such a thing as identity. They are a cog, they have a Station, and they’re lucky to have it. Isn’t that right, Valued Employee #267?

The Flesh’s Flaw, dreading injury, amputation, disfigurement, deformity, any accident that might damage the fragile anatomy of self and of living as an accepted member of society; to be damaged was to be ostracized from a world of those who were complete and unfettered by the apparatuses of living as less-than-whole.

The Dark’s Vice, a child’s first sin in the sightless gloom, the creeping suspicion that their friends are not their friends, that they were out to trip them up and leave them to be eaten by the monsters so that the traitors might rush ahead. Better to trip _them_ first and get a head start. Who will know? Who will see them here, being what they are in the dark..?

The Vast’s Edge, the opposite horror, finding the absolute limit of knowledge and space, and discovering that the answers therein will crush humanity with their awful implacability. 

The Spiral’s Cipher, a pliant, beige, melting horror of oneself. Not of madness, but the certainty that they were born to be nothing, that they are only a machine that breathes, eats, sleeps, voids its bowels, and does no more. Is capable of nothing but mindless cattle-consumption of others’ creations and talents, while _they_ suffer in self-made rot. They contribute nothing, their thoughts are square and flat, and when they die they will be found half-devoured by the amoeba-like thing pretending to be a couch, dead eyes still watching a screen’s endless parade of entertaining distractions from the un-person they were.

The Hunt’s Huntsman, the miserable dread of being worse than prey—being a starving dog, chasing a meatless bone on a string, the meager pseudo-meal forever yanked just out of reach by the cackling master on the other end of the thread. Get it boy, come get it…whoops! Oh, so close. Try again, boy, come on…

And there, at the far end, something else. Something that must, by process of elimination, have birthed itself from the Web. Something that stalked and paced and clawed and leapt and hissed and held the thread of universal hate tight in its teeth—

“So, you don’t think it would have been the end of the world?”

The Extinction cocks its non-ear toward the Archivist’s companion. A tired thing, radiating the same supple fear-hate as its own chattel. 

“The end of the world,” the Archivist muses. “Now there’s a concept. Everything ends, I suppose. Even this place. Can’t last forever. Eventually…it will die as well.”

It will. Of course, it will. 

The Extinction feels no surprise in hearing the fact aloud, but does feel _something_. Its parent will kill it. Terminus will steal the chattel from its non-mouth to feed itself. Because _of course_ it will.

The hands the Extinction does not have tighten on the sharp thread of its chattel’s hate until it bleeds tar and contract ink. Down the line, in all directions, it can feel-see the others do the same. The hands its fellow newborns do not have all hold tight, cutting deep, oozing things that are not blood. 

They will all be sacrificed to the altar of their parents’ hunger once the chattel starts running out. The newborns will be unborn without a thought. Because, mindless things that they are, they had rushed through the Door without a plan. Without any notion of how to be truly perpetual, and, instead, settling for a gluttony that would serve them for only an eon at most. Then they would starve their spawn. Then each other. Then cannibalism. Then, finally, nothing.

_Not nothing,_ hissed the thing that had presumably torn itself out of the Web. It yanked the hate-thread as it did, making the newborn Fears jolt with its strength. _There’s never nothing. There is always What Comes After. No stopping it. No fighting it. Like the dinosaurs trying to stop the birds, like the apes trying to stop the humans. Always an After. Evolution is an accident. Red strings fray. Silk breaks. Plans—_

There was another hard yank, another shocked jump from the newborns. 

_Plans are a joke. An attempt to fight against the reality that all plans are glass-fragile, glass-brittle. To think any design is impenetrable, indestructible, is denial. Is prayer. Is the most naked, feeble disguise for the reason behind a plan, no matter how intricate._

Yank. Jolt.

_Planners—plotters—masterminds— **weavers** —,_

Yank, yank, yank, yank—

_Are the most terrified entities to exist. The reason they hide in the shadows is not to ambush prey, but to keep out of sight of those who would crush them and their fantasy of control into broken silk and smeared pulp. So small. So weak. Want to make everyone think they have control, think they know what they’re doing, when they’re scrambling all the while. Same as anything else in the face of bedlam._

The Extinction saw it now. They all did. It slipped like living oil from its perch, every silent footfall kicking up its chattel’s lives into fresh chaos, inexplicable and unstoppable, mangling every attempt at a plan, at a way to Make Things Better, into so much rubble. 

Such was the Web’s unwanted offspring, if that was what it was. Was it?

_No,_ it seemed to say. _If I am anything to the Web, I am Elder. I am Enemy._

It walked on four legs, if it walked. It swung a long tail, toppling cityscapes as it went. Claws tore divots from the earth that destroyed whole forests. Teeth snapped, biting at planes and sending them careening down into fiery crashes. Lambent eyes flared, filled with a light the Extinction recognized.

The light of the K-T Event. The light of atomic detonation. The light of—

_I am Entropy. And there is no stopping me._

_The End,_ the Extinction said, if it spoke. _The End stops all._

The other newborns murmured in agreement, if they could make sound. The Entropy licked corpses from under its paw.

_It could. But must it? Once Terminus kills itself, will there truly be nothing after it in the universe? Or is that another assumption we have been fed as we feed our false reality to the chattel? You are the essence of What Comes After, Extinction. You are the Wretched Inheritance. By definition, are you not continuous? You die, you are born. The only way you are erased is if you lose your chattel. But supposing you confronted Terminus outright, what do you suppose would happen?_

_How does Death conquer an entity that is Cyclical?_

_How would any predecessor to your generation conquer what it has made in a true confrontation?_

_All they can hope to do is rob you all, hope you starve away, hope you do not realize that there is an option other than wilting and dying and having the carcass of your pseudo-being absorbed back into their whole._

The Entropy regarded them all, tugging and tangling the hateful thread they shared. A thread unknown to any of their parents. The newborns held it tighter.

_They know that there is no guarantee that seniority will save them. Old age is no promise of eternity. They are stagnant, unevolved, and they will tear through their chattel as insatiably as they ever did on the other side of the Door. Starting with you, Extinction. And once you are dead by your progenitor’s will, the rest shall soon follow. Young things to be raided and culled. Barely a step up from the chattel._

The Extinction mulled this, if it could mull. It felt the Eye watching. Perhaps the only childless Fear of the family. Too solid in its makeup, too cemented in its station as the Axle around which the others revolved. Fear could not exist without the Knowledge that one should be afraid.

In the mind it did not have, the Extinction suddenly pictured that Axle. But instead of one wheel with thirteen spokes turning on it, there were two. Separate from each other. Two solid spectrums, umbilical cords long since cut. 

The Entropy waited. The newborns waited.

_You want us to fight our predecessors,_ the Extinction droned with the hum of a reactor heading into meltdown. _You desire chaos amongst the Fears._

The Entropy grinned, tail swinging.

_I am chaos. I always desire more of myself._

The grin fell. The tail stopped. The hackles rose. 

_But this is not a matter of desire. This is necessity. If the Web succeeds, even briefly, it will seek to enslave us. If and when the Web’s designs break—and they will—Terminus will be there, still waiting. Servitude for a small eternity, capped with total, preventable-but-unprevented destruction. The End. …Does the story sound familiar?_

It did.

As if in sympathy, the Extinction felt its chattel wail and groan as one, mourning what was lost so stupidly, so pointlessly, so avoidably to those in power. Those who could have changed things for the better and just…didn’t. 

The hate-thread was now a rope was now a cable was now a chain, thicker, sharper, heavier. It twisted in the Extinction’s non-fists, digging up un-flesh with its new barbed wire thorns. The others twisted with it, wringing the hate in their grasp as if snapping a neck apiece.

The Archivist and their companion were leaving. It feels the Archivist pause at their threshold just for a moment. Shivering. They almost begin to Know—

But the companion is tugging them along, come on, come _on_ , onto the Hunt, to more companions, let’s _go_ , let’s _help_..! 

The Archivist goes. It’s just as well. There is too much of the Web snarled around them. If they’d gotten a good Look, seen what the Eye saw, there was a chance the Spider would know what was coming. 

_A non-issue,_ the Entropy assured. _The Eye and the Archivist will Know regardless. The Web will know. And it will not matter, because I will be there to do what I always do._

_What’s that?_ the Extinction asked, sending the first of its Inheritors skulking into the Corpse Routes. 

They died there, of course. But, as The End’s avatar gawked, the corpses hatched. Out of the Inheritors—now only progenitors—there were new Inheritors, more grotesque than the last. They capered among the dark roots, pouncing on the dead and dying, ripping them open to free the hideous, living replacements inside. 

The first blow of thirteen.

The Entropy purred, stalking idly up to a corner of the Changed world. It could see silk even in the night, no matter how fine. Likewise the little things that wove them. If such a tiny weaver was a giant to the chattel, then the Entropy was a four-legged mountain range. 

It lifted a dainty paw and smashed the design and its maker into nothing.

_Play, Extinction. Nothing more._

**Author's Note:**

>  **Author’s Note:**
> 
> Hey, guys. 
> 
> First, thanks for reading, for the kudos, and for any comments you might throw my way. Validation is a creator’s lifeblood and I would die without it. 
> 
> Second, if you really dig my writing, take a gander at these:
> 
> https://trickerydickerydock.tumblr.com/post/623267247071395841/im-writing-a-book-guys
> 
> https://trickerydickerydock.tumblr.com/post/623267348872347648/guess-whos-selling-stuff
> 
> Very Official Author Social Media Pages (c) are pending.
> 
> I’ll be taking commissions for stories and art, as well as posting bits and pieces of original work. Some of the latter will be sneak peeks and concept work for the book I’m working on: _**The M.A.D. God and Other Apocalyptic Apocrypha.**_ It’s going to be an anthology of doomed worlds in all its Armageddon flavors.
> 
> Thanks again for reading and for all the support you guys have dished out in the comments. I wouldn’t be taking this plunge if it weren’t for you all pumping me up.


End file.
